Scarlet Heart
by justbecauseofthis
Summary: ***SPOILERS to CH 70. Levi finds a mysterious book bound in red leather; meanwhile, Eren falls grotesquely incapacitated. As Levi watches over Eren's unconscious body, the seams of his sanity begin to unravel. [Ereri/Riren]
1. Chapter 1

The amorous subject does not wonder whether he should declare his love to the beloved object. He wonders, rather, to what magnitude he should suppress the madness of his passions: his longings, his griefs, his will to self-obliterate. This is not a question of romantic surrender. This is a question of insanity.

— _Anatomy of the Amorous Subject_

* * *

Levi can still feel it in his palm. The hot gush of blood that ran from Eren's face. He can feel it, still hot, still red, pooling in the middle of his hand. He closes his fingers around it. Dark, deep color seeps between his fingers. He can still feel it.

"He's insensible," Hanji says. "We've reached the threshold of his stamina . . ."

Hanji, Levi, Moblit, and the special operations squad stand together at the top of the ravine. Meters below them, Eren's titan, a stunted and inanimate vessel, has prostrated itself in the pebbled bed. His burning flesh hisses against the residue of a long-expired river, producing a shroud of steam. Skeins of hot vapor eddy in a cold, ceaseless wind whipping through the rift. The discharged vapor rises, cooling as it does, and washes over the squad's faces. Their skin grows damp. Levi's hair flattens to his temples.

"At this rate, how many guillotines do you think we can manufacture in a week?" Hanji says.

"Who knows?" Levi says. His right hand is closed around the hot gush of blood in his palm as he looks down at Eren's pathetic, impotent titan. The vapor condenses on his face, distilling into cold dew that clings to his pores.

"Well aren't you Mr. Helpful today?" Hanji says wryly. "Moblit, can you perform the arithmetic and provide an estimate that we can deliver to Erwin?"

"Yes sir." Moblit has a sketch pad in his hand, filled by several anatomical diagrams of Eren's titan. There's a drawing, Levi notices, of Eren's human face, supplemented by a lengthy annotation. Moblit closes the sketchbook but not before Levi glimpses three words: SPECULATED EMOTIONAL DERANGEMENTS . . .

He doesn't have time to contemplate the meaning behind those words for Hanji has started speaking again.

"Good, good. See how helpful Moblit is?" she says. "You could learn a thing or two, Levi." Her goggles are pushed back to the top of her head. She puts a hand on her hip. "We should help free Eren now. He looks exhausted."

No sooner are the words out of her mouth than Mikasa, a dark savage blur, descends the slope and comes up beside the insensible titan. Hanji darts after her, then Armin, then the squad, and then Moblit takes up the rear. Levi stays where he is, at the top of the ravine, overseeing the others below him.

It's been three days since they first tested the titan guillotine weaponry.

Three days since hope ran like a scarlet ribbon through the hearts of the Survey Corps.

Three days since Eren Jaeger collapsed to his knees with anemia.

Three days ago, as the success lifted and galvanized the morale of the Survey Corps, Levi had watched Eren, Humanity's Last Hope, the soaring emblem flag of everybody's future, crumble to half-mast, a hand flying to his face to stifle the free-flowing scarlet ribbon that had run through the hearts of the Survey Corps, then had begun to spin out of Eren's nostrils, unbridled. Blood had streamed between Eren's fingers and down his chin, marbling the ground with scarlet teardrops. Levi had bent down too.

He hadn't touched Eren, simply given him a rag to sponge up the bloody nose. A few stray drops might have landed on Levi's fingers. Or they might not have. He feels it, though. He feels a blooming wet warmth as if he had cupped his hands beneath Eren's chin to catch the bloodstream that fell from his face and let it pool in his palms until it ran thickly through his fingers.

Eren had dabbed at the nosebleed, muttering faintly behind the rag about their success. He'd been looking at the ground, and Levi had felt the compulsion to put a hand under Eren's chin and lift his face. He hadn't. Without touching Eren, watching him dab at the bloody nose, Levi had said to Hanji, or to anyone nearby, or to himself perhaps, a reminder: His power is not infinite—and neither is his body.

At that, Eren had finally lifted his chin, and the full weight of his eyes came upon Levi, arresting him in place so that they looked at one another long beyond what was innocuous and impinging on something that was cataclysmic. In that moment, Eren's gaze had become a palpable thing which impressed upon the surface of Levi's face.

Eren had said, _I'm just a little tired, is all . . ._ as the color was taken from his skin and emptied out before the Survey Corps in a long, fluttering, scarlet ribbon.

Now, three days later, although he hadn't touched Eren, Levi can still feel in his palm an open wound which Eren's blood, red and hot, is pouring through.

Down at the bottom of the ravine, Hanji has approached Eren's disabled titan. The squad arcs around her. "Don't worry, kids," she says. "Stand back. I'll get him." Her eyes are wide with hysteria as she ascends the bungled, halfway-formed titan arm. Levi watches, silent, crouched on a knee at the top of the ravine. He stays where he is, feeling his muscles tense as if they know something that his mind doesn't. A stone of uneasiness rolls around in the pit of his stomach.

Hanji opens the nape of the titan's neck. Moblit says, "Wait, Squad Leader, you shouldn't—"

She reaches down for Eren anyway. He's now accessible inside the freshly made gash, the knobs of his spine and the plates of his shoulders surfacing from out of the titan's flesh. She wraps her arms securely beneath his armpits. Bending her knees, gaining a purchase on the titan's shoulder, she pushes off with her legs and pulls with her arms, her body bowed over and strained like elastic. Eren doesn't budge. She grunts with exertion, teeth bared, and refines her foothold by digging her heels into the titan's bone. Again she pulls and strains her body. Her body winds increasingly tighter—she sustains a groan that rises in pitch and volume—and then the strain abruptly releases as Eren's top half finally comes loose. Hanji, taken by surprise, loses hold of Eren and nearly tumbles backward.

"Put him back, Put him back!" Sasha shrieks. She flings her hands out in front of her, her face stretched away. Connie goes down on all fours, retching up his breakfast with an impressive abdominal vigor. Jean staggers back a step, his skin taking on a transparent pallor. But Mikasa—

Mikasa is paralyzed where she stands, staring, horrified, the irises of her eyes glittering like two black beetle shells. "Eren," she says, in a failing whisper.

From where Levi watches, Eren's broad back, freshly emerged from the lifeless titan, is arched severely, bringing forth the dimensions of the taut musculature strapped beneath his skin. His arms are strained back. His head has fallen back too. His scalp is gone.

The blood is running now, overflowing, in Levi's fist.

With a strange, startling clarity, Levi can see, from where he's standing at the top of the ravine, each muscle in Mikasa's body glide under her skin, her calves and shoulders poising for flight. Her lips come open on the crux of a name, and the shout that rises from her lungs seems to propel her long legs forward, into a swift blurring sprint, breaking her out of the horrified paralysis. Her black hair lifts around her face, momentum overtaking gravity, and blowing her hair free behind her. Her black eyes are gaping and glittering. She is shouting for Eren.

It seems that in an instantaneous movement, Levi has traveled the distance from the top of the ravine to the bottom, and has grappled an arm around Mikasa's waist. For a moment, Mikasa's momentum and Levi's strength match the other, held in brief equipoise, suspending Mikasa in near-motionlessness. Her feet go out from under her with Levi's forearm wrapped around her gut, and her gut wrapped around his forearm. Then the forearm surpasses the gut, absorbing her motion and thrusting it back like a mirror throwing a reflection.

She ricochets and touches the ground to find balance. Her chest heaves with emotion. Her hair ripples against her cheek. Half folded at the waist, she raises her face to look up at Levi. The veil of her hair blows in black strips across her glittering, gaping eyes. Levi looks back at her, silently, down the bridge of his nose. A thick wall of titan heat radiates behind him. His clothing starts to sag on his shoulders.

As Levi looks down on her, Mikasa's mouth retains the shape of Eren's name. His expression remains neutral and unyielding, though Eren's blood runs hot and ceaselessly in his fist. The imaginary wound in his palm is gushing. Neither Mikasa nor Levi looks away from the other. Levi stares down from a point of vantage, imposing on Mikasa the weight of his emotionless, implacable glare. She seems to shrink into the distance, growing small and faded, the scarlet muffler around her throat reduced to a dull and distant fluttering ribbon. She lowers her eyes. Levi turns over his shoulder—

And sees Hanji gripping her wrist, the palm of her hand enflamed and her fingers twitching spasmodically. "GODDAMN SON OF A BITCH." Her eyes bulge like fish eyes, and her mouth becomes wet with projected spittle as she shouts, "IT'S GODDAMN HOT. GOD. _DAMN_." In front of her, halfway caught in the ropes of titan flesh, is Eren's body from the waist up, steaming and bare-chested, sprouting up from the nape of his dumb, lifeless titan.

Levi's fingers come open, slack and powerless to stop the blood flow.

The flesh of Eren's face has been stripped away, revealing the savage skull face beneath, the empty eye sockets smoking like two hot gun barrels, the grimacing white bone teeth gaped open. Eren's throat, too, has been shredded, the mechanisms of his breathing and swallowing visibly working the cartilage and tendons and tissues. And finally the chest and belly, flayed through and through, exposes the ribcage; the two pouches of his lungs inflating and deflating like thick plastic bags; and between them, the bloody heart muscle furiously palpitating.

 _I'm just a little tired, is all . . ._

"Oh oh. Incredible," Hanji says, coming around from Eren's back side to observe his mutilated front side. "Moblit, record this. Come closer. Here, here, get every detail."

"Squad Leader Hanji!" Mikasa says. She takes a step forward. Levi puts an arm out in front of her. They lock eyes again.

"The heart, make sure you get the heart."

" _Hanji_ ," Mikasa says emphatically. Her hands have closed into fists, but she doesn't pass the barrier of Levi's arm.

Hanji waves a dismissing hand at her. "Understand, Mikasa, it's for the sake of science. Moblit—" He's already at her side, his hand hurrying over the sketchbook's page— "Amazing, Moblit, you're amazing." Sweat melts down her face, plastering her hair to her forehead, and although her eyes maintain their hysteria, her mouth is grimacing with the internal conflict. But only Levi knows her well enough to identify the kernel of her hidden conscience. "That's good. You've done spectacularly."

"Thank you, sir." Moblit takes a step back, his hand stilling on the page.

"You damn four-eyes," Levi says, his arm held steady and still in front of Mikasa, "you've wasted enough time."

"Right, I'll get him out now." Hanji pushes the wet hair off her forehead and bends over Eren. She mutters to him, dropping her voice too low for the others to hear. "Thank you for your patience, Eren. I know it's painful. But I _must_ unravel the mysteries that your body holds. Please bear it a little longer. Now, then, here we go—!"

Holding him around the arms, avoiding the fleshless chest and face, she pulls and keeps pulling, her whole body and strength weighted under the pulling. Then, with a final sound of ripping and snapping, Eren's bottom half smoothly slides free. Hanji sets Eren down a moment to find breath. Sprawled out in front of him, Eren's long legs and his long feet remain intact. Perhaps a little raw and fresh, flushed and hairless like newborn skin. Like his chest, his legs and feet, too, are stripped naked, his pants, boots, and undergarments having burned away inside the titan. Mikasa stiffens next to Levi.

"The lot of you," Levi says, "turn away. He's indecent."

Jean appears immediately behind Mikasa, his hands flying over her eyes. Her lip bends back from her teeth. "Take your hands away, Jean."

"A girl shouldn't see that."

"Take your hands away."

"Mikasa," Armin says. "The captain will take care of him. Allow Eren to preserve some pride." As he says this, Captain Levi spins the dark green mantle off his shoulders and guides it down, with a billowy flourish, over Eren's abdomen. The captain's face is unlined and clear of expression, his dark hair limp on his forehead. He slides to one knee and looks into Eren's face. His right hand is drawn into a fist.

"Do you really think he cares about pride?" Jean says. Armin turns his head, staring at Jean across his shoulder. "How can somebody preserve pride while servicing out their body?"

"He's not a prostitute, Jean." Armin has turned a little further, almost squaring to Jean.

"He's a vessel for humanity to use till he's all spent up." Jean makes a sound of disdain, but his hands are soft against Mikasa's eyes. "Doesn't look like he's getting much pleasure out of it, though. Unless he's some kind of deviant."

"Going by that logic, then the whole military branch is made up of disposable vessels," Armin says. "Including you and me."

"Don't you get it, Armin? We're just pawns. Pawns for the commander to order to our deaths."

"I suppose that's one way to look at it. But if I were to think of myself as an insignificant chess piece, unable to change anything, I wouldn't put my whole heart into the task entrusted to me. And humanity can't afford halfhearted efforts. That's why I see it differently." Armin leaves then to join the captain and help transport Eren to the horses.

Jean makes another disdainful sound.

"We're not disposable," Mikasa says, gently blinded by Jean's palms. "Not me. Not you. And not Eren."

Jean sighs, resigning himself. He turns Mikasa around so that she faces away from the fleshless disaster that's become of Eren Jaeger. He's always been a disaster, though. Even as a fully fleshed trainee, fresh out of the country.

Still looking small and vulnerable, reduced to size that moment in which the captain had looked her down, Mikasa tugs her muffler high over her mouth, her eyes still covered by Jean's palms. Her black hair falls over his knuckles. Jean imagines closing his arms around her from behind and pulling her tight to his chest and whispering in her ear, saying . . .

What would he say—what _could_ he say—to comfort her? He could fake optimism and say, Eren's a lucky sonofabitch, He'll make it out okay.

Except Eren won't. Because the bastard's falling to pieces right in front of them. A skinless, should-be-dead but somehow-living corpse. And Jean hates Eren for that.

Rather than lie to her, Jean says, "Out of the three people you listed, one of them is indisposable, I'll give you that." Mikasa doesn't say anything in return, reduced and distant under the captain's heavy, implacable glare.

* * *

The rubber treads of Levi's boots absorb and soften the rocky, inclining ground as he walks steadily in reverse up the slope. His hands are wrapped around Eren's biceps, carrying him up the ravine with Hanji and Armin toting his legs.

"You had to make this difficult, didn't you?" Levi says low, just above Eren's fleshless skull face. "Making your close friends worry." The steam coming from the empty sockets warms the underside of Levi's jaw.

"I won't touch him," Sasha says, climbing alongside Hanji. She stays far removed from Eren and avoids looking in his direction. "Please don't make me touch him."

"You don't have to touch him, Sasha." Hanji's voice is thin, a bit out of breath. "We have it under control. But if you could please prepare the extra blankets we've packed, we'll use those to cover him up. We don't want to arouse any unnecessary alarm on our way back to headquarters."

"Yes! Good idea." She hurries up the slope, toward the cart and horses.

Still looking gray from his aggressive vomiting episode, Connie lags behind Armin. He stumbles on some loose grit. Touching ground, he reasserts his footing and goes on. "How can a guy's organs be fully visible," he says, "and he still be alive?"

Hanji stretches her head around to look at him. She smiles. "Fascinating, isn't it?"

"Uh, well. That's not the exact word I was grasping for. But it might be in proximity. Like a near synonym, almost."

"What were you thinking?" Armin says.

"Nauseating."

* * *

On the way back to headquarters, Levi and Hanji ride on horseback side by side, a generous distance ahead of the others. Hanji has the imprecise quality of somebody absorbed in their own thoughts. Her eyebrows have drawn down over her eyes. She sits erect on her horse.

"You went too far," Levi says.

"Ah, yes. You're right." She glances briefly at him, still a little vague with thought, and then puts her eyes ahead of them, onto the horizon. "I'll apologize to Eren once he's regenerated."

"Next time I won't stop Mikasa." His eyes fix on the road; he speaks with an inflectionless dispassion. "I wonder how she'll slice you up. Drive her blade up and through your gut so that your insides spill all over the ground and—"

"That's how _you_ would kill me, Levi. Mikasa would end me swiftly and painlessly. She lacks your predisposition for showmanship and extravagance." Hanji swivels her head around. Levi sees in his peripheral that she's waiting for him to turn his attention on her. He doesn't. She says, "Hey Levi—"

"No."

"I haven't said anything yet."

"I don't care."

Levi squints against the horizon. The sun is low, a half-opened eye, and strikes the sky into a red, wavering blaze. The road, made of finely packed dust, pocked with footprints, hooves, and wheel tracks, unspools before them. It approaches steadily closer, then moves on past. Levi feels, strangely, like a cold, isolated bead running dully along a worn, endless string.

Hanji starts to speak again. "For fifteen years old, he's of decent size. I have questions, though I don't know how comfortable he'd feel answering them. I wonder—"

Upon realization of what Hanji is referring to, Levi cuts her off. "Enough." He calls for Moblit and once Moblit appears, Levi takes the sketchbook from his possession and flips to the last filled page where he finds the portrait of Eren's human body. It's an impressionistic drawing of Eren's comatose body splayed vulnerable and broken, his chest open, his knees bare. The details of the image start to flesh out the longer Levi examines it, his memory compensating where the illustration ends. And the instant Levi realizes his mind's eye is staring at a stripped Eren Jaeger, his jaw turns white and he tears out the page.

Hanji reaches her arm across her chest, fumbling toward Levi's hands. "Levi? What are you doing? No, wait, don't—"

He shreds the paper and lets the pieces float on the wind.

"Ohhh." Her hand hangs frozen, empty and fruitless, in the air. She replaces it on the horn of the saddle. "Why would you do that? His anatomy is essential to understanding the titan shifting power. Even his male biology could—"

"I don't care."

"Now you're just repeating yourself. 'I don't care, I don't care,' that's all you've got to say? You should've at least shown Moblit's hard work some respect. You destroyed a very nice drawing of his."

"It's fine," Moblit says. "I think I understand why."

"Don't get me wrong." Levi extends the sketchbook toward him. "You've got talent."

"Thank you, Captain." Moblit takes the book and puts it away in a worn, brown satchel. He holds back, allowing some distance to come between himself and the two commanding officers. Levi and Hanji resume talking once they're out of hearing range.

Hanji is sitting high on her horse, and her chin is lifted. Levi maintains a casual aloofness. Their faces are burnished by the dying day's light, and they don't look at one another.

"There was nothing undignified about that sketch," she begins.

"I don't remember you asking for Eren's permission," he says.

"I have no doubt that Eren would be okay with it. It was for my research."

"That's not the point."

"Aren't you being kinder than usual?"

"No."

"I suppose not. Despite your callous exterior, you're actually a caring person by nature. I admit I got carried away. It wasn't my intention to cause damage. But Eren is aware of the responsibilities that fall on him. It's only expected that he makes these sacrifices."

"Aren't you also a caring person by nature?"

For a moment, her face is dull and blank. She doesn't smile and appears tired. Ignoring his comment, she finally says, "From this point forward, I won't cause any unnecessary damage. Now that I know Eren's limits, I can avoid violating them." She cuts her horse away from Levi's. He looks at her, but her head is turned across the opposite shoulder as she slows to adopt the gait of Moblit's horse.

Then Levi looks at his own hands. They're inattentively grasping the leather reins, clean and unbloodied.


	2. Chapter 2

It's dark outside and the temperature has dropped into the crisp chill of autumn. In the parlor, there's a fire going strong in the stone hearth, throwing shadows leaping across the room and pulling sharp angles and hollows and shifting depths from out of Levi's face. His mouth is firm and unsmiling; his eyes are steady and shadowed. He's dressed in a plain button up shirt, sitting cross-legged and very still in an upholstered armchair. His cheek is put upon his knuckles. His ankles are bare and pale under the hems of his plain black pants. He seems ethereal, insubstantial, as if one were to reach out he'd vanish.

From beneath the front of his hair, he stares at the fire, listening to the bright, expressive cadence of Hanji's voice. Across from him, she inhabits the other armchair and is reading out loud a letter from Erwin. She has not remarked on—nor will she remark on—the leather book wedged discreetly between Levi's hip and the chair's side. It's bright red, the color of a fresh wound.

"Erwin and Historia are coming to see Eren in the next day or so," Hanji says. "Erwin seems particularly concerned about Eren's condition. He doesn't want Eren alone at any given moment during his recovery."

Levi does not appear to move, saying in a low, placid voice, "The squad will take turns keeping an eye on him."

Hanji folds the letter and puts it aside. "Erwin is also bringing a rare salve that may help facilitate the regeneration process."

"Hm?" In the armchair Levi remains very still, his knuckles bracing his cheekbone. The crackling of the firewood nearly overcomes his low, placid voice. "How generous of him. Always the do-gooder, that blond bastard."

"You don't want to use the salve?"

"It doesn't make a difference to me one way or another. It'll restore Eren's power more quickly, won't it? The slacker's already got too much free time on his hands."

Hanji's glasses reflect the fire's glow, hiding her eyes beneath bright, flashing light. "If you think we're pushing Eren too hard, why don't you stop with the sarcasm and say so in plain words?"

"It's the titan power we're dealing with, so fortifying the walls is Eren's responsibility. I have no say in the matter."

"You're his superior, Levi. You decide if Eren needs rest."

"Hanji." Levi hasn't moved at all in the armchair, shadows and depths shifting in the immobile, calm visage. "I can't sacrifice the time we don't have for one person. If I choose to let Eren rest, the districts that have yet to be fortified could be attacked. Who's to say that it won't happen?"

"You're right." Across from Levi, Hanji leans forward in the other armchair, balancing her elbows on her knees and folding her hands in front of her chin. Despite the repositioning, her eyes remain hidden beneath the orange flames reflecting in her glasses. "It could happen; it's a gamble—and it's also your call. Do what you think is right."

Levi closes his eyes, the light and shadow warring on his face. He looks like he could be sleeping, he's so still. Hanji doesn't move either, watching him. Then his eyes come open slowly, drowsily, his irises black and dim. "We'll facilitate the regeneration process and get him back on his feet as quickly as possible. We have to finish shoring up our defenses before we embark for Shinganshina."

"Yes," Hanji says. "I agree that's the best option."

Levi doesn't look at her, doesn't say a word. He lifts his head from his knuckles to flex his right hand. It's callused, clean, and— _pulsing_.

"Squad Leader Hanji. Captain Levi." A modulated, distinguishable voice carries to them, and both heads, Levi's and Hanji's, turn on their shoulders in a single corresponding motion.

At the mouth of the lightless hallway, Mikasa has arrived, emerging out of the darkness as though emerging out of nothingness itself. The shadow seems to run off her body like liquid as she strides in and crosses the room to stand in front of the fire. Her carriage is stolidly formal, her hands bent primly behind her, at the small of her back. Her shoulders are square, level. As she speaks, she seems to look at both Levi and Hanji simultaneously, commanding their attention.

"I understand that the guillotines are a breakthrough. And I'm proud to be a part of the Survey Corps in crossing this new frontier," she begins stiffly. "But do you realize, exactly, how much you've been taking from Eren without giving anything in return?"

"What are you getting at?" Levi says.

"Don't you see that you've asked him to tear off his own skin, so that you can make your weapons? He isn't an infinite resource. He is a human being. He needs rest and nourishment and care—"

Levi raises a hand for silence. "As long as Eren possesses the titan power, this is his responsibility."

"If Historia hadn't come up with an alternative, you would've offered him as a sacrifice to the Reiss family without a single scruple. You would order him to die, after he's done nothing but faithfully serve the Survey Corps."

With his pale irises catching the firelight, Levi appears to look at Mikasa through two smoldering embers, though his eyes are heatless and cold. "Yes," he says, in a voice without warmth, without emotion. "I would order him straight to Hell."

Mikasa flinches—then stares. Her eyes are wide, showing less color and more gleaming whites. When she speaks, her mouth hardly moves. "Are you even human?"

"What Levi is trying to say, Mikasa," Hanji says, before the hostility can escalate, "is that Eren is a single life weighed against many." Curved into a posture of contemplation, she has her hands folded in front of her mouth, the lenses of her glasses levelled on Mikasa. "It's the responsibility of the commanding officer to make these difficult choices. However, owing to Eren's hard work, we now have a way to drive titans from the walls. This is a victory for all of humanity."

"Yes." Mikasa's eyes are still wide, white, and gleaming, her hands bent stiffly behind her. She remains unpacified. "Except Eren."

"I suppose that's true." Hanji's hands unfold. The lenses of her glasses glare at the floor, then lift again. "But I know he'll be relieved to see what we've achieved together. He can celebrate when he's regenerated."

Mikasa's eyes narrow at that. "No, once he regenerates, you'll push him to manufacture more weapons until he's incapacitated again."

Levi leans back in the chair with a leisurely indulgence, his hands wrapping the armrests. Mikasa's face darkens as she watches the set of his shoulders comfortably sink into the padded upholstery. Her eyes are like knives.

"You lost your family at a young age and were taken in by the Jaeger family as one of their own," he says. "It's only natural that you developed a personal attachment to their son. And the nature of that attachment doesn't interest me."

Her hand flies to the muffler about her throat. She averts her eyes. Briefly Levi wonders about that dirty, ragged muffler, and the connection it has to Eren.

"Let me put it this way, then. Tell me, Mikasa." Levi's voice has become darker, lower, colder. His body, however, remains indulgently at leisure in the armchair with a kind of complacent indifference. Her eyes return, knifelike, to his face. "You would rather all of us die—including the innocent and the young—all of humanity to be consumed by titans and stuffed into their disgusting bowels until they vomit us back up in dismembered chunks like butcher's meat; and you would rather our lost comrades to have died in vain, than lose your precious friend. Is that correct?"

Her pupils have shrunk into tiny pinpricks, and she stands straight-backed and rigid. "You sound like you have your mind made up," she says. "Although it hasn't been necessary yet, if it comes to that decision, regardless of everything he's done for us, you've already assigned Eren a death sentence."

Levi's right hand unwraps from the armrest, rising. His knuckles settle against his cheekbone again. He looks coolly at her from an oblique down-tilt. "Although it hasn't been necessary yet, if it comes to that decision, regardless of what he's done for us in the past, it has already been decided that his death will be his final service to humanity."

The center of his palm starts to pulse.

It is running again.

Fast—

"He has nothing to himself, then," Mikasa says. "Not his own life. And not even his own death."

"You think he's special in that way?" Levi leans forward, looking up at her through the front of his hair. His strikingly pale eyes are slashed by black strands. "The others before him were just the same. They fought and gave up their lives, and now their memory is a source to draw from, to give those of us who still live the strength to keep fighting. Now, get this through your head, Mikasa, your boyfriend is not special."

It's running fast and hot and red and it won't stop, pouring from the middle of his hand. It gushes from the spaces between his fingers, streaming beneath the white cuff of his button up, and down his arm propped on the chair's armrest. Levi wants to cut off the blood flow, he wants to grip his wrist and stop it from bleeding out. But the stable part of his mind knows it's an illusion. It's not real. Eren isn't bleeding through a hole in Levi's palm. That's impossible.

Mikasa doesn't flinch or blush or blink, watching Levi with a mask of pure dissimulation, ignorant of Eren's blood freely pouring from the invisible wound in Levi's hand. Her fist comes to her chest in a salute. "I want you to know, Captain, that when the time comes, I will share a burial ground with Eren and Armin. We are in this together, and I will eliminate whatever or _whomever_ tries to come between us. Goodnight, Captain. Goodnight, Squad Leader." She backs the way she came, returning to the darkness clotted in the hall. She sinks away and ultimately coalesces, vanishing from sight. They hear her footsteps going away from them.

"Hn." Levi stares into the darkness where Mikasa has retreated. His lip has bent a little over his teeth. He sinks back against the chair and can feel the muscles in his jaw set. What will happen, he wonders, if incompatible interests turn her against him? He wonders if she has the physical power to do it—to drive her blade through him and slice apart his flesh to get what she wants.

He closes his hand around the bleeding, unseen wound, and his mouth softens.

"Do you think that was a threat, Four-Eyes?" His voice is almost gentle, a shade off affectionate. "Should I discipline her?"

Hanji is curved forward, deep in thought, her hands folded at her chin. She seems not to have heard him. He waits, watching her think, waiting for her to feel his eyes. When she remains motionless and vague, impervious to his patient attention, he raises his voice, saying, "What is it?"

Hanji rearranges her glasses. The refracted flames strike momentarily brighter, flaring whitely across the lenses, until the frames settle on her nose again. She pulls up in the chair, attentive and distinguished, frowning at him in a kind of tragic disappointment.

"I thought you would've known by now, Levi. Titans don't have bowels. They're absent of digestive systems. Don't you pay any attention at all to my research?"

Without saying a word, Levi rises fluidly out of the armchair and leaves the parlor.

* * *

Levi signals his entry by rapping his knuckles, his hand back-facing, against the door. He doesn't wait for a response. He pulls it open. Inside the infirmary, Mikasa has drawn up a chair next to the bed occupied by Eren, who's insensible and unmoving, his flesh hissing faintly as it stitches itself back together. The bedsheet is folded at his waist. Mikasa has him propped up so that he's in a sitting posture, his skull face at attention, the empty sockets staring sightlessly straight ahead. His lungs swell and then depress; between them the red heart throbs. Levi pauses on the threshold to stare, disgusted but also, somehow, intrigued.

The only light in the room comes from the lamps fastened to the wall. Shadows cut in through the darkness and elongate Mikasa's face. She appears gaunt and her skin seems wax-like, as if Levi were to reach out and touch her, his fingertips would pockmark her flesh. He steps fully into the room but hovers near the door. He guides it noiselessly back into its frame. Mikasa doesn't react to his presence, staring vacantly into the empty holes in Eren's face.

"I thought the starched sheets might aggravate his injuries," she says, without looking away from Eren and without gaining any depth to her stare. "That's why I've left his upper body uncovered."

"Visiting hours are over," Levi says.

"There are no visiting hours. This isn't a municipal hospital."

"I'm here to relieve your post, then." She doesn't move. "It's bedtime for you kids, anyway."

She remains motionless, her arms limp, her hands slackly folded in her lap, and her flesh strangely wax-like. Every part of her is held still, except for her eyes, which then move, without her head turning, and steady on his face. She doesn't say anything, her expression blank and dissimulated, her irises like black glittering tar in the dimness of the room.

As Levi approaches, his footfalls noiseless on the floorboards, her eyes follow him. She watches, unblinkingly, as he deposits himself on the edge of the infirmary bed next to Eren. The mattress slants under the weight. He puts a hand on Eren's leg. Beneath the blanket he can feel the hard pillar of shin bone and a considerable knot of calf muscle. Eren's legs are long, lean, unclothed under the fabric. Levi slides his hand down, fingers shaped around the curve of shin bone, to Eren's ankle—and then further still to his foot. Lightly, he tugs on Eren's toes. The sensitive nerve endings don't respond. Levi draws his hand away.

"How can you tolerate the sound?"

"The sound?" says Mikasa.

"The sound of his heart beating."

For a moment, they listen together to the solid, regular, uninhibited thud that ceaselessly beats back the silence. "I don't mind the sound," she says. "It's evidence that he's alive."

Levi, a dark smudge silhouetted by the feeble, waning lamp behind him, turns to her. He leans his elbows on his knees. With the angle of the light high on the wall, half of his face has more depth the other, as though his bone structure were erected on an incline. "I see."

"He's in pain," she says.

"You can't know that."

"I do. I know it." Her voice is transparent like glass, made brittle by the bottled-up emotions. Her hand twitches to her muffler. Levi looks away.

"You're concerned about him, that's all," he says. "He'll be fine. His body doesn't bend to nature's rules. Yours does, however. Get some sleep."

"I'm not tired."

"Mikasa." He speaks her name in low, placatory tones. She stares at him. He looks back at her. It is different this time, their eyes locking. It lacks the heat and unforgiving animosity from before. Her face casts down, the black hair coming over her eyes like a curtain. Her fingertips dig into her kneecaps.

"I'll be the first person you alert if his condition worsens," she says.

"Hanji will be the first person I alert," he says.

The tips of her fingers blanch against her kneecaps, and her teeth show in an involuntary scowl. Then, with a practiced fluency, her face smoothly repossesses its standard inexpression, serene and untouched by him. She rises to her feet. Levi leans back off his elbows, moving as she does, watching her. His eyes have softened, and his voice has softened too.

"You will be the second," he tells her. "That's the best I can do."

Without raising her head, she glances at him under the veil of her hair. Her dark eyes are not critical, and they are not accusing. They plunge and remain there on the floor as she offers a salute of departure.

"Yes sir." She turns on her heel, tugging the red muffler tight over her mouth.

He watches her go out the door. She shuts it gently behind her, leaving Levi suddenly alone—and in the dark—with an unconscious Eren Jaeger regenerating at a pace of alarming slowness. The mattress sighs, relieved of the extra weight, as Levi relocates to the unoccupied chair. The wood holds Mikasa's body temperature, suggesting the prolonged time of her stay, here, overlooking Eren. Once Levi settles in the chair, likewise settling in his thoughts, becoming still inside and out, he puts his knuckles to his face and begins the night watch.

Silence is overcome by the sound of Eren's heartbeat, slow and regular and continuous. Levi, for a moment, confuses it for his own heart beating. Feeling the pulse in his neck beating at a different tempo than that of the one he hears, Levi stiffens and listens harder to the sound. _That's Eren's heartbeat . . ._ , he has to remind himself. For some inexplicable reason, Levi becomes warm and flustered. How many people know what Eren's heart sounds like?

Levi blinks away the warmth and resumes watching. Watching now with a cold, medical stare. He hasn't been there long when a hard and fast arrhythmia seizes the heart muscle. Levi can hear, explicitly, the crescendo of the pulse—accelerating, filling the room with the rapid sound of turbulent blood. Eren's body arches, contorted hard at the back, as if faced with an exquisite agony. The jaw bones drop open and a billow of steam surges out.

Levi watches, a little wide-eyed, his spinal column going rigid and straight. Eren flings out a hand, reaching toward Levi. From the tips of his nails to the domes of his shoulders, Eren is incongruously whole. Half boy, half corpse.

Levi's breath is short now, fast. Eren's hand strains, his fingers spread apart, the fine hand-bones standing starkly out. The black empty sockets stare at Levi.

Levi's vision diminishes, narrowing, the two dials in his eyes turning tighter and tighter inward while Eren's two empty sockets expand, black and profound and infinite. The rest of the room seems to whirl away, and it is only Levi and those empty eyes. This is death. These are the reaper's eyes. Two cavities that hold nothing. Two vast tunnels spinning with a dead blackness, fanning out in a ubiquitous reach to consume all that it touches. Levi's skin is awash with something cold, something like fear. Beneath the shuddering reel of his own thoughts, Levi hears Eren's heart seizing at an unrestrained speed. _Thud thud thud thudthudthudthud_ —

Slowly, carefully, staving off the coldness—that thing like fear—Levi reaches out and receives Eren's outstretched hand. The instant their hands lock together, Eren sinks back against the pillows and his white bone teeth close together in a sleeping grimace. The seizing heart begins to retrograde back into its slow, regular monotony.

Levi expels a breath.

"You startled me." He hunches forward, feeling the tensed cables in his back slacken with relief. As he slows his breath and wills the beating hammer of adrenaline to abate, he closes his eyes. Behind his eyelids, he sees two vast spinning tunnels, gateways into nothingness pulling him in. When he opens his eyes again, he looks at Eren. The empty sockets are staring passively at the ceiling, the body motionless. Without separating their joined hands, Levi pulls the chair closer to the bedside.

"Eren," Levi says. His voice seems to fill up the entire room, and a sensation of claustrophobia comes over him. He waits for the pitch of his voice to fade before bending his head and putting his voice against Eren's ear, low and still and unobtrusive. "If you can hear me, Eren, squeeze my fingers."

He watches the hand in his. It remains unanimated. Corpselike, if not for the feverish temperature under the flesh. In both of his palms, Levi pulls Eren's hand forward. It has long, narrow fingers rimmed by blunt boy fingernails. Levi straightens those long, narrow, boy fingers, spreading them gently out. Then Levi's head sinks, the front of his hair falling forward.

In the very center of Eren's palm, at that place where blood runs from a gaping unseen wound in Levi's own hand, Levi puts his mouth, softened, warm, to the hard, callused skin there. Levi closes his eyes and lets Eren's fingers curl, with an unconscious idleness, to span against his cheek. He leans his head into Eren's palm and presses the lifeless hand against his face.

Eren stares sightlessly at the ceiling.

* * *

He is in a forest.

It's an ordinary forest, unpopulated, silent, and very still. Insulated by a half-light gloom, giving it a strange underwater aspect. The air is stagnant, neither hot nor cold. It's nothing at all.

He doesn't know how he ended up here, isolated, in this other world, where it's so quiet that the absence pounds against his skull. Nor does he know the reason for why he is here. The silence presses down with a deep-sea pressure into his ears, onto his thoughts. He feels suddenly amplified, grossly exaggerated, as if his pulse could shake the earth, and his breath could stir the trees. He breathes slowly, subtly. He feels his heartbeat at every part of him, throbbing.

There's a book lying in a blanket of brown, moribund leaves. He bends down, clears away the foliage, picks it up. The book has a scarlet cover that speaks of something forbidden and fatal. A warning that he ignores.

On opening the book, the inked letters appear and impart meaning instantaneously; _instantaneously_ , not as though Levi has actively read the inked letters and has used the mental faculties he possesses to distill meaning. But _instantaneously_ , as though the active reading and mental processes have been omitted altogether, and the inked letters impart information by simply meeting the eyeball's passive glance. The page reads:

 _Unbearable_

 _On the account of love's tragic nature, the amorous subject (also known by other names: the lover, the poet, the romantic . . .) has a catastrophic character intrinsic to his existence. Despite his sufferings and certain annihilation, he waits impatiently and indefinitely for the beloved object's return._

Almost immediately, with the information promptly imparted, the book melts in Levi's hands, turning to a dark fluid that runs thick and hot through his fingers. The fluid carries the fragrance of rust. It gathers and streams profusely from his palms.

"Captain Levi."

Levi lifts his eyes to see Eren standing before him in the forest, in the pristine dress of his uniform, smiling and looking at Levi with an unfamiliar, tender appreciation. Eren has _never_ looked at Levi like that before.

Levi's eyes drop to his own red-covered, outstretched hands. "Is this yours . . .?"

Eren comes forward then—floating almost, making no sound, gliding through the underwater ambiance of the forest—and reaches out, palms up, to take Levi's hands in his. Their hands slide with a frictionless slip into a mutual grasp. Eren's fingers close around Levi's wrists; Levi's fingers close around Eren's wrists. Their palms wrap one another. They hold onto each other like that, standing nearly toe to toe. Eren's tender smile hasn't faded. The blood on Levi's skin has transferred to Eren's skin, smearing them both in the same dark red color. It has started to evaporate with a faint hissing noise.

"What do you intend to do about me?" Eren says, finally, looking at Levi through the rising thin vapor.

Levi holds Eren's eyes. He neither tightens nor loosens his grasp on Eren's wrists. "What is there to do? One way or another, you'll leave everything behind."

"Does that scare you?" Eren says.

"I've expected this outcome since the day you so enthusiastically signed up to join the Survey Corps. Impatient to become a corpse."

Eren is smiling with closed lips. "Is that what I want, to become a corpse?"

"Aren't you the suicidal maniac?"

They watch each other's faces through the wreaths of steam floating up from their joined hands. Eren says, "What if the truth is . . . I'm terrified of dying? I tremble at the thought of it."

Levi hesitates, a little less certain. "It's already been decided. Even this blood is beginning to disappear."

"It's always disappeared in the past." Eren's smile is sealed shut like a door. Inaccessible. "Even so, you've retained its memory in the palm of your hand. What is it that you really want?"

As if he's unsure and distrustful of Levi's intent, Eren removes his fingers from Levi's wrists, one by one, and withdraws his hands slowly. Eren's eyes come down on Levi again, and beneath their weight Levi feels his flesh yielding. He becomes suddenly very aware of the scent of Eren's skin and of the artery in Eren's throat faintly jumping and of the places where Eren's clothing gathers, loosens, and stretches to accommodate the proportions underneath.

Eren comes a final half-step forward, moving beyond toe to toe, to close the few remaining inches between their bodies. Line for line, their chests press together. Eren's inhales expand against Levi's exhales. Levi looks up at Eren, his chin lifted. Heat gathers under his skin, and the scent of his own warming flesh churns thickly around them. He wonders if Eren can sense it, the pounding unrest in Levi's body; if Eren can see the flesh softening where his eyes touch. Levi's hands fall to his sides, and he grows stock-still with something like physical desire, willing without moving, for the uncovering of Eren's naked skin. As though he could remove Eren's uniform that way.

Eren raises his hands, the coat of blood sizzling away into curls of steam, and puts them on Levi's face. His eyes are heavy, hot, and Levi's own eyes roll back, without focus, in a feverish delirium. His chest expands deeply into Eren's. Exhaling hard through the nose, his eyes coming back into focus, Levi raises his hands to join and cover Eren's, pressing their hard-skinned palms firmly against his face. Under the screen of black lashes, Eren's irises appear to spin like two pinwheels, whirling fast, then faster—an impassioned momentum building inside of him. Levi finds the momentum building inside himself too. A spiraling whirlwind of ache and longing.

Eren bows his head then. His mouth is already softened and parted to match up and align to the solemn contour of Levi's lips. He puts the pad of his thumb against the arch of Levi's mouth, pushes until his lips come open just so. Eren's head is bent very close.

 _The most that you can hope for is a delusion . . ._

The moment has an infinitely slow, explicit quality—full of indefinite waiting and of indefinite impatience as Eren moves in. Already Levi's skin is dissolved, melted into a bodily languor as the heavy smell of close, warm skin seems to come over them both in shuddering waves. And then—

Eren vanishes, leaving Levi poised with the unfulfilled touch, his head back and his skin soft, the chemical torture of physical desire writhing in his veins. Levi staggers a reversed step. His mouth feels cold, where there had just been an almost-contact. He feels the broken promise at every part of his body: his mouth, his hands, his stomach. He feels hollowed.

But Eren is not gone. He stands a few meters away now, having instantaneously jumped the distance, it seems, from just above Levi's lips into the shadows between the trees. It is then that Levi realizes this is not real. It's a dream.

As he resigns to this unreality, Eren begins to speak with a serene, unsympathetic, machinelike precision that sounds much older and much colder than the Eren of Levi's living memory.

"Do what you find necessary," he says. "I won't resent you." He turns around and Levi watches as his back ebbs into the thick, murky bowels of the forest. "Once I'm gone, I won't have the choice to resent anyone."

With each soundless step, as Eren's foot lifts from the foliage, beneath the sole of his uniform's boot, a spray of little scarlet blossoms springs up from the earth. He leaves behind him a wake of lucid red flowers.

 _Corpses don't feel anything at all._

 _I should know._

 _This insensible, comatose state_

 _is a death rehearsal . . ._


	3. Chapter 3

A huge part of this story involves pining!Levi. Warning, this chapter has some angsty pining.

* * *

 _Insomnia_

Just as the psychotic lives in fear of a compulsive madness which he has already experienced, the amorous subject lives in fear of a bereavement which has already befallen him.

 _—Anatomy of the Amorous Subject_

* * *

In the main cafeteria, Levi is sitting, half-turned, abstracted and opaque, his right hand resting limply across the table. His left lays draped across the back of the chair. Beneath the charcoal smudge of his dark hair, his eyes are like sleepless, depthless glass. He is alone, as usual, far removed from the rest of the Survey Corps, who patter about, with the clash of dish and flatware and their austere breakfast selections afforded by the low budget of the Survey Corps. Most of their faces are still dull with sleep, and they speak in low voices among themselves. Hanji is neither dull nor speaking in low tones as she approaches Levi. Her face is bright; her voice is loud.

"As expected, Mikasa has taken first watch," Hanji says. She sets down a bowl of something hot and a pint of water and draws out the chair across from Levi. "She's with Eren now. I was just there." The chair scrapes the floor as she asserts the seat fully under her weight and sits down.

"She shouldn't skip meals," Levi says.

"She didn't. I made sure of it."

Levi's limp, resting hand glides, ghostlike, to the teacup set before him. The five fingers wrap the porcelain rim and bring the cup to his face, which hasn't moved, half-turned, in profile to Hanji. He stares through shadowed, sleepless eyes across the stone floor. His wrist bends back, straightens, and then glides away to replace the teacup on its saucer.

"It's strange how when you walk into the room, there's no sense of Eren being there at all," Hanji goes on. "Even though his body is lying right in front of you, breathing, you feel no presence of him. It's as though the part that makes Eren who he is has departed. His body has the impression of an empty vessel."

Crescents of insomnious bloodlessness hang, dark and profound, under Levi's eyes. His clothing is an ensemble of plain black. His sleeves are pushed to his elbows.

Hanji is still speaking. "I've decided to think of his state as a sort of . . . death rehearsal."

Levi's eyes, keen with attention now, turn fully on her. His face is cold, severe. "What nonsense are you going on about?"

Not looking at him, she eats her porridge. "Nothing, really. I was just saying that Eren's insensible condition is a kind of death rehearsal. It's as if he's practicing the state of being dead. And he's rather good at it."

"Good at being dead?"

"No," she says. "That would require him actually being dead. What I'm saying is that he's able to partake the role of a corpse without becoming one himself."

Levi makes a vicious, cynical sound by expelling air through his teeth. His hand glides out again and wraps the rim of the teacup, withdrawing. He speaks with the cup poised at his lips. "Don't tell him he's got talent as a corpse. He may take you seriously and make it a permanent condition."

Hanji guffaws. Her head is bent forward, and her face is rounded with food. "Eren's not one who's eager to die."

The teacup lifts. Over the porcelain, Levi's eyes watch Hanji closely, savagely. His hand moves away again. The teacup clashes to the saucer.

"He doesn't seem very concerned about his body, in any case," says Levi.

"I disagree. He doesn't care for pain. I get the feeling he wants to avoid it as much as he can, but his responsibilities often afflict him with injury. Even though it's in his nature to avoid pain, he does what needs to be done without complaint. You've trained him well."

Dust motes of memories are suddenly displaced from the floors of Levi's mind. Old images float up behind his eyes, and he sees a conference room, a chalkboard, and white, shining, blurred slits that open onto the familiar yet distorted faces of his old squad. Their images have been diluted by time, faded. The minute details that made his squad real, that made them alive, blur into the far-away distance of his memory—

Levi is the focal point of the meeting, an arc of bright, blurred faces turned toward him, as he imparts a strategy of how to extract Eren from his titan. One face among the rest stands out, untouched by time, unfaded and clear because he has remained by Levi's side, despite the several claims on his life.

 _Your arms and legs would be severed,_ Levi had told Eren, _but you'd survive at least. Though you'll sustain serious injuries._

Eren had looked wide-eyed at Levi, misplaced, as if somebody had plucked him from out of pastless nonexistence and dropped him where he was, right then, right there, into a body that had the power to change into a monster. But Eren himself was a monster for other reasons. It had nothing to do with his ability.

 _Wait, Captain . . . Isn't there another way?_

Levi had crossed his arms, and his voice had plunged into a calm, quiet, dangerous octave. _Are you telling me, Eren, that you are unwilling to make any sacrifices?_

There is more than one Eren. There are two. There's the one who hesitates. And then there's the one who turns a blind eye to his own fate and says, _I'm just a little tired, is all . . .,_ _as the fabric of his body unravels like thread._

Perhaps, when the day ultimately comes and Eren meets his certain end, overexposure to a fleshless undead Eren will carry over a feeling of temporariness and give everyone the impression that Eren is only "a little tired," as if he could liberate himself from being dead and bring about his own resurrection. Except this time he'll remain a corpse, restricted to the unbeating heart, and the rest of them will stand around his dead body, absurdly waiting for his return because they've grown accustomed to it. They've developed a habit of waiting around for Eren to wake up. And out of this routine, they'll continue waiting for a new beginning that will never arrive as Eren rots away in an unhallowed grave.

Hanji is speaking again, her chin in her hand. "As far as dying goes—or its practice rehearsal—you're quite awful at both, Levi. Zero talent." She smiles. "I don't think you'll ever proficiently pull off being a corpse."

"A costume of death doesn't suit me."

"No, it doesn't. I suppose that's why Erwin has entrusted you with the serum. At the very least, he can rely on you to survive. Even if the rest of us fall, against all odds, you'll be there to carry on our legacy."

Hanji is smiling. And Levi feels the weight of a thousand soldiers, a thousand lives come down on his shoulders, and with his naked hands, he lifts the world, braced beneath the heaviness of it, with a backbone made of indomitable iron and arms like steel pillars, as Eren's dead body rots away at his feet, his uniform shredded across his bare skin and his mouth slack with the suddenness of death, a deep skein of scarlet pulsing out of his wounds, and while Levi lifts this unbearable weight of legacy with a trembling strength, the corpse continues to stare profoundly into his face through two unblinking, colorless, marble eyes.

* * *

The sun has moved past noon high, and heatless autumn daylight pours in through the infirmary window, shedding across Mikasa in backlight as she sits, a chair drawn up, at Eren's bedside. She holds Eren's hand in both of hers. Her hair has pushed forward, over her eyes.

She's sitting like that, with the rigidity of a marble statue, when Levi enters. Once he sees her, he halts and folds his arms over his chest.

"This is Armin's watch," he says.

Mikasa doesn't look at him. "I've got it covered."

"You're mistaken if you think you can shirk your duties simply because your friend is taking a long nap."

"Armin said he would assume my duties for today."

"Is that right?" Levi leans back against the wall, near the door, arms still crossed, becoming perfectly still. His sleeves are rolled below the elbow, showing the hard muscle in his forearms. "And I don't imagine you feel any shame for casting your responsibilities on somebody else, then. You'll sit here while Armin, whose body is less capable than yours, struggles to lift heavy cargo supplies on his own." He's adopted a kind of black calmness, a genuine anger simmering, just below that careful, cool posturing.

Mikasa doesn't move, though the corners of her eyes spread wider. "He's not alone. Jean is helping him."

"Oh, well, that changes things, doesn't it?" Levi says this with just enough deadpan irony that Mikasa looks at him. "You can stay here, it's your choice. I can't make you do your chores yourself. It seems they'll be carried out, regardless. In my opinion, though, it should be Armin in here, and you out there. I elected you to transport cargo for a reason. And I think you know why that is."

This time Mikasa rises to her feet and releases Eren's hand, letting her palms unwillingly drag away, maintaining until the very last moment contact between their fingers. Eren's hand falls into a limp, lifeless retention of Mikasa's touch, still curled around the ghost-shape of her grip. She sweeps her hair behind her ear.

"Armin will be here soon," she says, in undertone. "I'm sure you'd prefer his company, anyway. I was being selfish, staying here."

"What makes you think he prefers Armin?" Levi says. Dressed in all black, still slanted against the wall, he looks like a shadow thrown across the room.

"In our childhood," she says, looking at Eren with soft, dark eyes, "those two were always leaving me behind. I could never quite understand their feelings. They spoke with such passion of places beyond the walls, but unlike them, I was content where I was—with my family and friends. As long as we were together, I didn't mind living in a cage. I didn't care that, inside these walls, we were no better than cattle. I didn't share their dream of reaching the outside world. The only thing I've ever wanted . . . was to stay by their sides. But I'm beginning to think my dream is an impossible one. I can't help feeling that the three of us will be separated, and I'll be left alone again."

"Yes," he says. "That's likely."

She whips her head around, fast, furious, her hair spinning out in a black blur, whipping across her eyes and then falling away again to spill like ink around her pale face. She's not so much sullen as injured. "Why would you say that?"

He stares steadily, but not unkindly, at her. "Who knows when it'll be. It could happen tomorrow. It could happen in a week. In a year. Sixty years from now. You can't know the date. But it will likely happen; that's what I think." Her face is sullen now, and sullenness rather than injury seems more natural on Mikasa. He pushes off the wall, his arms still crossed. "Are you going to live in fear of something you're unable to avoid?"

Her eyes are cold. She starts to walk toward him. "You really have a way of exacerbating the hemorrhage that's already flowing." She makes to move past him, but he sidesteps in front of her.

He holds her eyes, searching. "Hemorrhage?" His voice is low, quiet, earnest, and the imaginary wound in his palm begins to ache.

"I don't mean a physical one," she says. "I meant a bleeding wound of the heart."

"I see."

He holds her eyes longer, seeing into their dark, cryptic depths where a myriad of scars, old and new, have sunk in. Then he sidesteps away. She looks at him a moment more, as if seeing his cryptic depths too. The gash in his hand throbs, and her eyes slide to his wrist, watching his fingers close around it. Then she goes on. He listens to the diminishing sound of her going.

Rested upon the covers, Eren's hand still remains curled around the memory of Mikasa's fingers.

Levi's shoes contact the floor, in a slow, measured step, producing the soft, repetitious sound of pattering rubber. By the bedside, he stands, looking down at Eren's sleeping face. During the night, Eren's body has fleshed up and filled out. A thick thatch of brown hair caps his head again; the front lays lankly back from his forehead. There are now, running beneath his eyes, jagged sutures of titan flesh, as if he'd taken his fingernails and dragged them down his cheeks so that long shallow tears opened along his face. Even in his sleep, Eren looks like he's brooding over something. Beneath his sleeping face is a kind of dark, wild fury. His mouth is set in a black, sullen line. His eyebrows are drawn down. His jaw appears strong.

Carefully, Levi sits on the edge of the bed. He cups in his hand the knob of Eren's knee. He wonders what Eren is dreaming about—if he can dream anything at all in this deathlike state.

"You and that girl are a pain," he mutters. His hand follows the slope of Eren's leg to the ankle bone. "You should wake up soon. You're making her worry too much." His fingers slide further down, past the foot, and gather in the blanket.

In one swift flourish, the blanket comes free of where it's been neatly tucked, fluttering up in a clean white swell, and then falling back again in folds over Eren's bare foot. Levi doesn't think of anything at all—his head space is a silent, empty one—as he reaches out slowly, watching his own hand from a strange distance, foreign and disembodied, as though the hand belongs to somebody else. The hand clasps Eren's foot. The thumb pushes into the warm, pale sole and sinks into the skin. The toes curl forward. They move, not by nervous impulse, but by tendons being pulled, the way a puppet moves when its strings are pulled.

Eren is, as Hanji said, an empty vessel.

Cradling the curve of heel in his hand, Levi bends over then, not raising the leg, but lowering himself to it. His face comes down to the bridge of bone in Eren's foot. Levi's body begins to warm as he thinks about succumbing, about putting his lips to the lowliest part of Eren's body, as though to symbolically disempower himself and bow down to the accumulating weight that pulses under his clothes, within his bare skin. He thinks about all of Eren's body. He thinks about sinking into its surface, engulfed by it, as all his thoughts drain away from his head, attenuating his consciousness into nothing more than the uproar of bodily culmination. His clothing seems, suddenly, to lay very heavily on his skin.

Levi turns his face away. Eren lies very still. He appears to breathe slowly, his bare chest rising and falling in deep, cathartic regularity, as though caught in the soft, dissolving aftermath of passionate apotheosis. Levi closes his eyes. He can still hear in Eren's breathing an illusion of breathless ecstasy. Levi stays quiet, his eyes shut, though the muscles in his face start to wring among themselves into a haunted, defeated expression of anguish. His palms seem to breathe in the reverie of Eren being inside of them, warm and soft and yielding, Eren's flesh giving itself up to the cups of Levi's hands, surrendering to his touch. Levi bows his head under the burden of the fantasy, his hair coming over his eyes, and he looks, to the outside eye, like a hopeless, wretched man in mourning.

Opening his eyes again, Levi releases Eren's foot, and in another swift flourish, the fabric ballooning up in a white flutter, he sweeps the blanket back over the toes. At once, he rises to his feet.

Footsteps approach and Levi briskly re-tucks the covers around the corner of the bed. The door opens and Armin enters. He comes to a halt when he sees Levi, who's standing at the bedside, observing Eren as he sleeps. The captain has an unreadable, paper-blank expression, but there are dark, deep half-moons of restlessness under his eyes cutting into his wan, weary face.

"I've come to assume my watch, Captain."

Levi turns, and as he negotiates the room, Armin puts his fist on his chest, holding himself at attention. When he reaches Armin's side, Levi pauses and clasps his shoulder.

"You wanted to comfort your friend, and I can understand that. But from now on, you are not to carry out any chores apart from your own. Understand?"

"I understand, sir. But I think you're overestimating my character." Armin has turned his head to look at Levi. Silently Levi takes his hand away from Armin's shoulder, putting it loosely at his side. Armin continues. "Comforting a friend would be the natural thing to do. But it wasn't out of kindness that I agreed to do Mikasa's chores. She has a better track record in ensuring Eren's wellbeing than I do. If you remember, Eren almost died when he was with me. Mikasa is more capable at protecting him. She seemed to be the logical choice."

"That may be true," Levi says. "But your job isn't to protect him. It's to keep him company. Apparently Erwin thinks it'd be a shame if Eren were to feel lonely in that vegetative state. Personally, I think the brat's being spoiled."

Armin laughs a little. "He's been spoiled his whole life. By his parents, by Mikasa, and now by you and the commander."

"Not by me."

Armin smiles—it's a silent, mysterious smile—and then he moves further into the infirmary. Guarded and interrogative, Levi turns his head, watching. The daylight streaming through the window bathes Armin's hair in gold highlight. He stands beside the bed, his back to Levi, his hand placed delicately atop the mattress without touching its unconscious inhabitant.

Levi's eyes slide from the gold highlight of Armin's hair to the sleeping figure of Eren. Without his volition, Levi's memory preserves the image of Eren lying there on the bed like a naked, recumbent effigy, his head slightly propped by the pillows, his arms straight, limp, and upturned above the blanket. And through that narrow one-track lens of physical desire, Eren appears to be a secret, personal invitation tucked inside a tightly sealed envelope of heat and hard muscle.

* * *

 _The Beloved Body_

The amorous subject observes the beloved body. He searches the body in detail, as if he wants to see what is inside, as if the cause of his desire were in the beloved body's machineries (He is like those children who disassemble a pocketwatch to apprehend the abstract concept of time). What is this excruciating longing that I am feeling?

 _—Anatomy of the Amorous Subject_

* * *

In the parlor, Levi is awakened by a summoning touch on the shoulder. Hypnotic, lambent flames pour onto his retina, and he doesn't look away, postured in the exact position in which he had sunk into the depths of sleep, sitting with his fist to his face, stroked into a drowsy languor by the soliloquy of the fire. Almost palpably he can feel an imprint on his body where two imaginary legs had been tied in a flush, frenzied bow around his waist, and he can feel, with the same near-palpability, the warm path where sweet, ragged breath had fanned across his face; and above him, two foggy eyes had looked down on him with a loving tenderness that reduced Levi to a soft, gasping fraction of a man.

The sensations fade rapidly, leaving nothing at all, save for a hot, concentrated lump in his gut and a moral urgency to vomit up the lump and take a cold, purgative shower. He can't recall the dream. But he can feel its influence in his body. He knows it had involved Eren. He wants to vomit.

"Why don't you sleep in your bed like a normal person?" Hanji says. Her voice floats to him from behind. Her slow, quiet footfalls approach.

"I'm not a normal person." His lips move only marginally when he speaks, and his voice is a strained, guttural murmur, still under the influence of the dream.

"You do sleep, though, don't you?"

He's about to tell her that he'd wager only a person as careless as she can sleep like a child through the night. But then he doesn't, knowing that Hanji's conscience weighs as heavily as his own. He is thinking this silently, when Hanji starts to speak again.

"You were about to accuse me of sleeping like a baby, weren't you?"

"So what, you can read my mind now?"

"Some things are predictable," she says. "You've seemed heavier today."

"Are you trying to tell me I'm getting fat?"

Hanji grins, charmed momentarily by the flash of deadpan humor. She comes around to the front of the chair. She sits on the armrest. "I believe the saying goes, 'It's the beauty on the inside that counts,'" she points out.

"So . . . my intestines."

"Precisely. You wouldn't want to be relieved of those, now, would you?" She grins at the side of his face. He's looking at the fire without expression. She sobers, wrapping her hands around the armrest, her ankles lax and sprawled in front of her. Turned across her shoulder, she never removes her eyes from Levi's profile. "You're troubled about Eren. I can see how it weighs on you." She watches the side of his face. He doesn't say anything.

She goes on. "Anyway, Jean's watch is almost up; I went looking for you to tell you that. But when I saw you sleeping, I thought I might go ahead and cover your post. However, I knew you'd rather keep an eye on Eren yourself. Am I right?"

Silent, with an almost eerie fluidity, Levi pushes out of the armchair, rising. His hands slide into his pockets. From where she sits on the armrest, Hanji can't see his face, only the meticulous trim of black hair across the back of his neck.

"A monster like Eren can be eviscerated alive and continue breathing," he says in a voice placid and restrained. "Not a single scar will sink into his flesh. No matter how deep his wounds, he'll forever remain unmarked. So, tell me, why would I be troubled about him?"

"Do you want a real answer?" she says. He doesn't look at her, hands pocketed, his shoulders poised high with a cold, impassive dissimulation. She sighs. "You don't need a concrete reason to worry about Eren. Yes, his recovery is guaranteed, as far as we know. But he's your subordinate and he's injured. It's normal that you'd feel responsible. I feel responsible as well. I learned from the hardening experiments that multiple shifts can lead to severe physical trauma. If I hadn't asked him to shift consecutively. . ." Lifting a hand from the armrest, she adjusts her glasses with her thumb and forefinger. She looks at the wall now and crosses her arms.

"It's too late for regret. I pushed him to keep going, knowing the risks it raised. At any rate, Eren is recovering steadily without complication—and that's all I can ask for." The fire sputters as a log splits apart. She turns across her shoulder again to look at the trim of Levi's hair. "It's not only guilt that's been troubling you, is it?"

When he finally replies, his voice is low and still restrained. The back of his head depresses a little. "I don't really know."

She watches him quietly. His muscles seem to set into the clay mold of his present position. He doesn't move.

"I've noticed you've been consuming strange material during your pastime reading."

"It's not my book," he says.

"I didn't think it was," she says. "Whose is it?"

"Who knows? I found it in my room the other day. On my bed."

"The bed you don't use?"

"Yeah."

"And you don't know how it got there?"

"No."

"How strange—"

"Hanji."

Hanji blinks and adjusts her glasses. "Yes?"

"Does your offer still stand?"

She leans forward to stare, mystified, at the side of his face. "You want me to cover your watch?"

He's inscrutable, cold, hands pocketed, still molded in position with his head depressed a little. "If it's not too much to ask of you . . ."

"It's not too much to ask. But I figured, surely, you'd want to watch over Eren yourself."

The soliloquy of the crackling fireplace stretches on. Levi's pale irises reflect the light as they stare, distant and steady. The thought behind the two eyes drifts purposelessly on in unwaking reality. When he turns his head, his body immobile below the neck, the movement is languid, eternal, meaningless. His eyes land on her, but they don't seem to see her.

"Thank you." Rotating, the rest of his body aligns with the turned head, and without removing his hands from his pockets, Levi moves like a purposeless apparition toward the hall. His footfalls produce no sound. "Goodnight."

"Yes, goodnight, Levi," she says. "See you in the morning."

As Levi turns into the hall, the darkness wraps around him as if it were animated, swallowing him up in black tongues of absence. Midstride, he seems to vanish into nothing. His footfalls are inaudible.

From where she's sitting on the chair's armrest, Hanji removes her eyes from the hall and puts them on the crackling fireplace.

The moment Levi had looked at her, she had seen in his eyes a strange shadow of raw bereavement.

And even stranger than the sourceless mourning, when Hanji had entered the parlor and found Levi asleep, his knees had been splayed, a fist bracing his cheek, and he had looked to Hanji like a boy, no older than Eren. By closing his eyes and slipping accidentally into unconsciousness, Levi had stripped down to his most honest character. He had looked soft. The surface of his pale, open face had been bathed in the fire's glow, his mouth protruded slightly around the air passing in and out of his lungs.

But there had been something strange to Hanji about this. Heavy with sleep, his body had appeared to disclose itself, opening up to anyone in proximity, like a flower blooming to the sun. Anyone was free to look upon him, to think about him, to touch him as they willed. The soft, glowing quality of his skin had seemed to attract hands. Even Hanji had felt herself forcefully resisting, restraining her arms at her sides. She wondered who else had passed by and seen him like that, completely defenseless.

Suspended where she had been at the edge of the parlor, for a brief, bizarre moment, she had also imagined that she could see a naked, intangible figure astride him in the armchair, heavy, hungry, and inescapable on top of him. And writhing furiously in his lap, desperate with the urgency of worldly calamity, the figure had been drawing out Levi's breath, suffocating him where he slept.

Vague, stiff, uneasy, Hanji continues to stare into the fireplace from where she sits on the chair's armrest. The upholstery is still warm where Levi's skin has passed onto the fabric the temperature of his hot beating pulse. Somehow the room, even now, holds a sense of bereavement and a greater sense of erotic longing.

Standing, Hanji moves toward the fireplace. She crouches down, balancing on the balls of her feet, and uses an iron poker to stoke the fire into a brilliant, revitalized blaze. As she watches the flames feed upon themselves, she thinks, despite her solitude in the room, that she can hear against the sputtering of the fire, two breathless, indistinguishable voices drifting to her from the armchair as they rise together in a long, trembling moan.


End file.
